In a commencement address at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine in Baltimore on May 25, 2006, New York City's mayor Michael R. Bloomberg decried the political manipulation of science to further ideological ends, saying, "Today, we are seeing hundreds of years of scientific discovery being challenged by people who simply disregard facts that don't happen to agree with their agenda ... Some call it pseudoscience, others call it faith-based science, but when you notice where this negligence tends to take place, you might as well call it 'political science.'"

The ruling in the appeal of Selman et al. v. Cobb County School District et al. -- the case in which a federal district court ruled that textbook stickers describing evolution as "a theory, not a fact" violate the First Amendment -- was issued by the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals on May 25, 2006. The three-judge panel vacated the district court's judgment and remanded the case for further evidential proceedings.

Featured in the May 25, 2006, issue of the New England Journal of Medicine is George J. Annas's article "Intelligent Judging -- Evolution in the Classroom and the Courtroom." Annas distinguishes three waves of activity seeking "to banish or marginalize the teaching of evolution" in the public schools: attempts to ban the teaching of evolution, attempts to teach "creation science" alongside evolution, and attempts to teach "intelligent design" alongside evolution.

In Minnesota, Senate File 2994 was passed by both the House of Representatives and the Senate on May 20, 2006, but without the provision that would have prohibited the state department of education and local school districts from "utilizing a nonscientifically based curriculum, such as intelligent design, to meet the required science academic standards under this section." The Senate approved a version of the omnibus education bill with that pro

A transcript of Patricia Princehouse's speech "Science and the First Amendment" was posted on The Nation's website on May 16, 2006. She delivered the speech in New York City on May 11, 2006, as she accepted a Hugh M. Hefner First Amendment Award from the Playboy Foundation.